Budget airlines SpiceJet, IndiGo and all-business carrier Paramount Airways Coming to terms with lay-off will hire more than 500 pilots, cabin crew and ground Coming to terms with lay-off operations after turning in surprise profits in the first quarter.
The move comes as a surprise as global tourist inflow is expected remain low during the [...]

Air Berlin, LTU and dba customers across Germany should expect delays and cancelled flights on Monday after pilots’ union Cockpit called for a 16-hour strike in an ongoing wage dispute.
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Meanwhile other crew members have been asked to participate in a “sympathy strike” between 5:30 am and 8:30 am, Cockpit said on Monday.
The airline flies [...]

Japan Airlines Corp., Asia’s largest airline by sales, will fire 1,400 administrative staff as it struggles to meet its cost reduction plans.
The cuts will reduce the airline’s administrative staff from about 5,800, according to Kojiro Waki, a JAL spokesman.
Japan Air will form a new department called the “Customer Experience Division” to improve service [...]

123 Thai nationals have been left unemployed following Qantas’ decision to close its cabin crew base in Bangkok.
The airline, which blamed the closure on a slump in international travel demand, said the base was no longer viable.
The Australian carrier had previously embarked on a large recruitment drive for offshore cabin crew in a [...]

Late last year, a public furore created by Jet Airway’s decision to lay off 1,900 employees in one go forced the airline to reinstate them in less than a week.
Its rival Kingfisher Airlines seems to have learnt a lesson from the whole episode. So, now when Vijay Mallya’s airline is sacking people, it is being [...]

About 250 new jobs should be created at East Midlands Airport following an announcement the airline Jet2 will have a base there from next spring.
The extra carrier means about 130,000 more passengers each year will be able to fly to destinations including Turkey and Egypt.
Jet2 will initially base one aircraft at the airport, making [...]

It’s been one of the toughest years yet for Singapore Airlines. The company reported a net loss of 307.1 million Singapore dollars (US$212.5 million) for the quarter ended June 30, compared with a net profit of S$358.6 million a year earlier — the airline’s first quarterly loss in six years. Singapore Airlines carried 19% fewer [...]

British Airways celebrates 90 years of leading the travel industry, since Transport & Travel Ltd (a precursor to British Airways) launched the world’s first commercial flight which departed from London to Paris on August 25 1919.
Since then, the airline has carried more than 1.2 billion customers on its extensive route network, and become recognised as [...]

Qantas Airways Ltd has shut its cabin crew base in Bangkok, leading to about 123 Thai nationals losing their jobs, according to media reports.
The airline has decided to close the Thailand base because of falling demand for international travel.
With Bangkok now closed – Auckland, London and Tokyo are the three remaining off shore [...]

In a meeting that went on for about 10-hours on Tuesday, Air India (AI) chairman Arvind Jadhav has finally managed to break the deadlock.
Among 14 employees unions, the All India Cabin Crew Association (AICCA) has accepted the management’s move to cut performance-linked incentives (PLIs) by 50 pe rcent.
AICCA has about 3,500 members. Though the numbers [...]

Deregulating the airline industry was a major legislative achievement for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who pushed the issue even though he didn’t have jurisdiction over aviation and used his substantial charm and persuasiveness to change the way America travels.
In the early 1970s, Sen. Kennedy held extensive hearings as chairman of the Subcommittee on Administrative Practice [...]

New seats on Delta to lie almost flat
Delta Air Lines is adding business-class seats that recline almost flat on all flights from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco to compete with United Airlines and Virgin America.
Those new seats recline 150 degrees, Delta said Tuesday in a statement. The Atlanta-based carrier also said [...]

National carrier Air New Zealand said there are signs demand for travel is stabilising but the environment remains turbulent as it reported a 90 percent fall in profit on Thursday.
The airline said the global recession had hit air travel hard and it has been cutting jobs and capacity to cope with lower passenger numbers.
“This result [...]

Continental Airlines was deep in merger talks with United Airlines in April 2008 as soaring fuel costs seemed to threaten their survival.
A linkup of the two carriers would have allowed them to combine networks and consolidate airport operations, trim flights and staff and gain pricing power with suppliers and consumers.
It would have put them [...]

Airlines cut fares to get more passengers on planes and salvage the summer travel season, but now their job gets harder heading into the slower fall and winter months.
The nine largest U.S. carriers lost nearly $600 million in the second quarter of this year. Bigger losses are predicted in the third and fourth quarters, and [...]

Qantas said that following “detailed discussions” the two carriers could not reach an agreement on the “key terms” of the proposed £3.6bn deal that the airlines have been trying to hammer out in recent weeks.
The news is likely to come as a blow to BA chief executive Willie Walsh who has made it his [...]

Ryanair Holdings Plc, Europe’s biggest discount airline, may be able to benefit from discounts offered by regions to attract the carrier to second-tier airports after a European Union court upheld its challenge of an EU veto.
The European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg today annulled a 2004 decision by the European Commission that canceled [...]

With more layoffs yet to come, U.S. passenger airlines employed 394,300 people in October, the lowest total in 15 years, the federal government said Thursday.
October’s numbers are down 5.6 percent, or nearly 24,000 jobs, from a year earlier.
The numbers will only get worse in the next few months as the airlines complete the [...]

Virgin America today announced that Robert B. Dana, its founding Senior Vice President – Chief Financial Officer, will step down in early 2009. Mr. Dana cited personal reasons for his decision, particularly the challenges of the transcontinental weekly commute from the New York area that he has conducted since the Company moved its corporate headquarters [...]

Facing employee resistance, Jet Airways (India) Ltd is mulling withdrawing a plan to cut 2009 wages for those employees whose gross salary was at least Rs75,000 a month, three top executives familiar with the development said.
A section of pilots, engineers and senior management has said they are unwilling to accept a pay cut, a senior [...]